How does Zika virus cause microcephaly?
- Zhexing Wen1,2,3,
- Hongjun Song4,5,6,7 and
- Guo-li Ming4,5,6,7,8
- 1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
- 2Department of Cell Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
- 3Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
- 4Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA;
- 5Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA;
- 6The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA;
- 7Department of Neuroscience, Mahoney Institute for Neurosciences, Perelman School for Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA;
- 8Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA
- Corresponding author: gming{at}mail.med.upenn.edu
Abstract
The re-emergence of Zika virus (ZIKV), a mosquito-borne and sexually transmitted flavivirus circulating in >70 countries and territories, poses a significant global threat to public health due to its ability to cause severe developmental defects in the human brain, such as microcephaly. Since the World Health Organization declared the ZIKV outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, remarkable progress has been made to gain insight into cellular targets, pathogenesis, and underlying biological mechanisms of ZIKV infection. Here we review the current knowledge and progress in understanding the impact of ZIKV exposure on the mammalian brain development and discuss potential underlying mechanisms.
Keywords
Footnotes
-
Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.298216.117.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genesdev.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
